After school Club

The Lady Mechanic After-School Club

The idea of Lady Mechanic After-School Club was conceived by LMI and funded by the MacArthur Foundation, Illinois, Chicago, to create awareness among girls in Secondary Schools as regards the opportunities for economic, personal and social empowerment available through the Lady Mechanic skill acquisition programmes.

The programme engages girls with interests in becoming auto mechanics and supports them to take their interest further, possibly into full training in an LMI programme. It encourages more girls to take interest in Mechanical/Engineering courses as they would have been thought the rudimentary part of the course to make it easier for them to pursue a career in engineering at the higher level.

Engineer Sandra Aguebor, the founder of the LMI, through the after-school initiative, organizes regular outreach programmes to schools across the country and in the sub-Saharan region. She is assisted by the LMI Project Coordinator and LMI Alumni to mentor the girls about economic, personal and social empowerment based on their own experiences and that of LMI. The guideline for the programme as released by the LMI practical education faculty reveals that the selected schools will be equipped with modern tools and practical learning devices, while qualified officers from the Lady Mechanic head office in Lekki, Lagos, will deliver the programmes.
The programme is a groundbreaking one, the first of its kind in Nigeria. More than 1000 girls are expected to be reached through the outreach program. LMI hopes to take the program to as many states as possible in Nigeria, starting from Lagos State. Hence, the clarion calls for more sponsors to extend the After School Programme to other states to improve the lives of women, and engender gender equality in the workplace in the sub-Saharan region.

LMI After-School Club has received applause from the Lagos State Ministry of Education, which presented a Corporate Social Responsibility Award to LMI, and from other bodies. And it has further strengthened the number of partnerships which LMI has already established, both with the public and private sector organisations such as the National Productivity Centre, National Automobile Association and Nigerian Automobile Technicians Association. Also are industry partnerships and collaborations with technical colleges, schools, education boards and curriculum development authorities.